The Art of Showing Up: The Importance of Mentorship and Support Featuring Eric Knox, Founder of Holla Mentors
How do we build a better future for our kids in a system that wasn't built for their success? Through mentorship, we grow as a community by helping one another. Eric Knox, founder of Holla Mentors, is doing just that! Tune in for the final episode of the summer, and Boosting Our Voices will return on September 6th.
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Our Host
Ari O’Donovan
Transcript:
Ari O'Donovan: (00:01)
What's happening y'all? The sun is out and so am I. We're taking a short vacation and we'll be back the first week of September. We've been preparing for this and while we're out, a new show will go live right here on this feed. Friend of the show, Dr. Ryan Hassan, is launching his own show called Neighborhood Doctor, where each episode he'll answer questions like How to cure a headache or How to stop a baby from Crying. It's fantastic. I've heard the first few episodes and I know you're gonna love them all. The show will go live next week and we'll be back next month. So until then, stay cool and say hi to your neighborhood. Doctor, are y'all comfortable? We hope wherever you're listening to this, you're comfortable. This show is for the Bipo Communities in Oregon hosted by a black woman about the amazing work we do every day in this state. So let's build together, connect with our communities, add some laughter and humor even when it's a difficult conversation. Let's boost our voices,
Eric Knox: (01:03)
Our work at Holla. I feel like you know those kids walk away with that sense of belonging and feeling amazing about who they are as a black person and they get permission to be themselves in predominantly white spaces.
Ari O'Donovan: (01:22)
Welcome back y'all to another new episode of Boosting Our Voices. As always, I'm your host Ira o' Donovan, and I'm also Boost Oregon's Diversity program director. Today we have with us Eric Knox. He is the founder and executive director of Hala. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Eric.
Eric Knox: (01:42)
My name is Eric Knox. I go by he him pronouns. I'm a portlander. I've been here 30 years by Waya la I'm homegrown South central Inglewood dude who came to Oregon State on a basketball scholarship and that's what brought me to the Pacific Northwest. And uh, I run a nonprofit called Holla and Holla School. And it's a culturally specific, I'm sure we'll get into it, mentoring organization for Black, brown and Native American kids.
Ari O'Donovan: (02:13)
I wanted to start with a quote that I found on your website from Dr. Christopher Emden that I think sets the tone really well for what Hala does. And it goes consider that our babies are too advanced in their thinking. To be successful within institutions, too rudimentary to capture their brilliance. It is tough to bend to something far beneath you when you were created to stand tall. It is tough to be accepted by systems that haven't yet learned to keep up with your brilliance. You've created so much in the past 10 years at Holla and Fubu Newberg. Can you walk us through where the inspiration for these organizations came from?
Eric Knox: (02:55)
I operate from an asset-based understanding of our community. Anyone that serves our community should count it as a privilege. We deconstruct any kind of white saviorism and white supremacy that assumes it's bringing all the assets to the community and black and brown spaces and our community is, is a community to be rescued. I push back on that. I understand the brilliance of it. And so one of the things I wanted to do was create first a mentoring organization and then later this last year, we'll get into it, the school space where I was inviting people that wanted to mentor an opportunity to be transformed and not do solely the transformation that when you enter into this kind of space, you are, are a recipient of the very abundance, brilliance and creativity of our kids that will shape your life. And so, you know, I've been in this space as a learner and you know, in the black female space, probably for the last 10 years, part of Paula is me working with our Benson girls basketball team and we, maybe we can get into that in a little bit. But over the last 10 years, you know, I'm married to a black woman, I got black daughters, but I've learned a a ton just working with these black girls and they have shaped and changed my life. So when you take Christopher M's quote and you know, that's sort of the impetus of us understanding that we have much to learn when we enter into the space of these children that we have an opportunity to walk alongside.
Ari O'Donovan: (04:28)
I love that. First of all, I love that your whole life and your family and everything you do is just blackety black, black. I love that. I really, that speaks to my heart . It really does. As a black woman, I really love that.
Eric Knox: (04:43)
Hey, I'm about that, right? I, you know, like all my spaces, I always tell our kids and the people that work that we are unapologetically black and brown and native and, and we we're not trying to dumb down any of that. We believe the riches are in the niches and our niche is that space.
Ari O'Donovan: (05:04)
That's so true. And I think it's important that you mentioned earlier that you work to dismantle that whole white savior like outlook. That's such a common, common thing. You see it everywhere. You see it in Hollywood, you see it in movies and TV shows. You see it in how people fund programs and all this kind of stuff and where grant money and all that kind of stuff can come from. And it really is, those are some of the best words I've ever heard anybody say on an episode of my show. It is a privilege to work with black and brown and indigenous bipo people. It is a privilege.
Eric Knox: (05:43)
You know, me and my wife man, we watch black shows all the time because, you know, like when I grew up in LA I didn't have to fight as much for my identity. 'cause you know, growing up in Inglewood when I grew up there it was, it was predominantly black. And so my whole world was that. So when I came to Oregon State, then I moved to Portland and it's so, you know, like it's u s A today says this is the whitest mid-size, one of the whitest mid-size cities in America. If you're an outsider, you come here from a big city, you find yourself having to had to fight for your identity more than you do in a bigger city. That's not to say that big cities don't have their issues 'cause big cities are diverse, but they also divided. I, I experienced that.
Eric Knox: (06:22)
But you have such a big robust culture, you know, that represents you, that you don't have to think about it as much as you do in a city like Portland. So I was going there because you know, like me and my wife, like we watch shows and we just like, man, we are so funny man, we are just so brilliant man. The way we take words, the way how creative we are, you know, like there's nothing like, I mean just because of, you know, part of, you know, I was in Kenya and uh, about 20 years ago with my wife for 30 days and there was a guy, he was an editor for the Kenyan paper there and it was his last piece before he was going back to the United States. And he, he, his heading was like real shocking and he said, thank God for slavery.
Eric Knox: (07:11)
And I was like, wait, what? And he was a black dude, right? This editor, I was like, what grew me in, I was like, what is he talking about? And once I got to reading the article, he was talking about the African-American experience and he was just saying like, we have our own history that's distinct from white America and distinct from Africa. He says, we live somewhere in between the African and American, right? We live in the hyphen. And he was talking about what does it mean to live in the Hy Hyphen and how, you know, our suffering and our struggles and shadow slavery and Jim Crow and all this stuff that has shaped us to be different, right? As a people. So me and my wife, we just, we just crack up at the beauty of being, you know, not just part of the diaspora but being black in America and the brilliance that ensued as a result of that kind of suffering. So to your point, man, I just, you know, I love all things black, just to be honest
Ari O'Donovan: (08:12)
Really though I love that Blackity black, black, there's nothing like it for art, for music, for intellectual abilities, fashion, all of it. It's just so dope. I can see that. I can see that come through in everything that you do with holla. And you mentioned a girl's basketball team. You've been working with the female black space. Can you speak a little more about that? Mm-hmm.
Eric Knox: (08:43)
Yeah. You know, I accidentally stepped into that space. I had moved, you know, this is my second stint in Portland. So when I say 30 I five in Corvallis and, and 20 over 25 here. But then I spent another eight years back in la Uh, my wife was homesick so we went back and then it was, God, what I say, God's providence that brought us back here. And a buddy of mine had just got the job at Benson Tech. His name is Curtis Wilson. And he reached out, he heard, I just moved back, I had been back less than a month. And he said, man, we are really trying to or reorganize our sports program. Would you consider coming and being the basketball coach at Benson, I was all excited because I was thinking it was the black boys space. Most of my work had been on the black boys space.
Eric Knox: (09:30)
So I thought that's what he was talking about. So I went to his office and when I sat down he kinda laughed and he goes, notice that I didn't tell you the gender. And then I was like, oh, he didn't, he goes, yeah, I wouldn't bring you here to offer you the position as the head coach of the boys. I was offering you the head coach of the girls and nothing wrong with, you know, working with working in the black female space. I just had never done that before. Right. And I never really even considered that, right? Like I just, I had been on the black male side and so he said, look, I'm gonna give you a week. There's a bunch of other folks that are looking at this position, but I'll give you a week as first, write a refusal and then let me know what you think.
Eric Knox: (10:11)
About three days in, I was talking to my wife and I said, you know, this position's come available. I don't know if I should take it. And she says something that I love. She goes, you know, I don't know if what the difference is or what the confusion is. She says, the mission is still the same. You love working with black kids. The only difference is, is the gender. And I was like, binging . So I jumped into that space. I made a one year commitment and actually I just finished 10 years and I, you know, it was sort of like cla it was like a clarion call for black girls because a lot of 'em were falling through the cracks. There was, you know, nobody was paying to the black girl basketball side. And I saw this opportunity to send an abundance of black girls to college first in their family.
Eric Knox: (10:55)
And so I took the position, we really grew, you know, if you listen to any of my basketball interviews, I'm unapologetic about, you know, this is a program for black. And even the p p s school district tried to like say, you know, don't talk so much about black and brown. Make it more generic, right. And inclusive. But I was like, nah, I'm about black girls. Period. We grew this program and in 2019 we ended, went in the state championship. I just finished my 10th year. We've done everything. We've, we've gone to Howard, we've been to nama, which is the National African American Museum of History and culture. I just use basketball as a springboard into so much stuff to provide exposure for our girls. And so over the last eight years, what people don't know that when it comes to sports, boys and girls suburbs or the hood, there is no program that sends more high school kids to college in Benson girls basketball over the last eight years. And I'm proud of that. 'cause most of these girls are first in their families that are going to college. So that's kind of who I am as a high school coach. And uh, like I said, in 2019, it was the first time in the school's history or actually in the state's history that an all black high school girls basketball team won a state championship at the highest classification of Oregon sports.
Ari O'Donovan: (12:19)
Wow. That is so dope. Oh, I just love that. And I had no idea, and I really should have had you and your wife on this episode 'cause she got some profound things to say too. , she, from what I'm hearing,
Eric Knox: (12:35)
She, that's my childhood sweetheart together. 42 years. She didn't put up, she been married to about nine different me . That's what I was,
Ari O'Donovan: (12:45)
The versions .
Eric Knox: (12:48)
Oh my word. Mary known each other 42 married 27. Good.
Ari O'Donovan: (12:55)
Oh, I love that. And she's so right. It, it doesn't matter if it's black boys or black girls at Mission, it's still the same. The black is still the same. You can do the just as good a work. And you've been working with the Benson girls team for 10 years, man,
Eric Knox: (13:12)
Yo more. They wear me out
Ari O'Donovan: (13:16)
.
Eric Knox: (13:16)
I love them. I love them. You know, um, you know, the ironic thing was, was that, you know, I, I'm a pretty spiritual man. After about four months into it, I get emotional. The kids always tell me, stop crying on 'em. I always get emotional when I tell this story. But, you know, I was about four months in, like, this is 10 years ago when I first took the job. I was four months in and I started with our middle school kids and girls because I was like, if you're gonna build a program, you gotta get start young. So I, I took, I found like 13 black girls that were in sixth, seventh grade. And you know, when you have to take them to like sporting events, man, you gotta take, they, they brother, they cousin, they, because, you know, they mom's gotta work and they can't afford daycare. So it is, and then you gotta feed 'em and they cousins or they siblings. And so I'm sitting around, we're at a, at a, at a little subway shop and I've got like 13 of the girls and they cousins around and siblings. And of course I gotta pay for it all.
Eric Knox: (14:20)
And I was about four months in and I was like going through this confusion like, why am I in this space? Like why am I, how, how did I get to this black female space? Maybe they needed a black female to be doing this. I was real insecure about it. And I said, but one thing I noticed over the first four months, I noticed I just didn't see a lot of fathers there at the games. At the events. And so I asked him, I was like, Hey y'all, where, how come I never see y'all dads? I only see a couple of y'all dads at the events. And uh, man, just one story after another of, I don't know, my dad or my dad is incarcerated or my dad got murdered or, and I felt like as they were just going around the room, like something just spoke to me and was like, this is why I got you in this space.
Eric Knox: (15:08)
'cause you going to be a unicorn. You're going to be a black dad and you're gonna be here in abundance and you're going to be consistent and you're gonna be here a minute. And I have, I've been here for 10 years and, and the crazy thing is, I, I'm 57 years old and I feel more relevant to these girls than I was when I was 27 or 37. Like, I don't know what it is, but God touched me, in a very unique way to be in this space. And I connect with these girls in such a profound way. And yet I I'm still confused by it
Ari O'Donovan: (15:48)
All. That is so powerful. And I'll tell you, um, when I was a kid, I, my dad passed away when I was 12, so I only knew him up until that time of congestive heart failure. My mom worked as a hairstylist for, she worked every Saturday for about 40 years. She was always working. So when I had choir rehearsals, anything like that, choir events, she was just not there. She couldn't be there. I resented her for that for a while. And it wasn't until I got older and started to be an adult and realized she was doing the best she could. She didn't ask to be a single mother, she just, she she put that on her back and just went with it and did the best that she could. And to have somebody like you around for these girls, and I can tell you from personal experience of a similar type of thing, it's really, really important. And I do, I believe that you are meant to be in that space and doing that kind of work. It's really impactful for them. And I, I know that because I was one of those, uh, young girls.
Eric Knox: (16:54)
Hmm. Thank you. I need to hear that, especially from a black woman. 'cause I always, I carry a lot of self-doubt, you know, in this space. And then I get a confirmation that yeah, this is where you need to be.
Ari O'Donovan: (17:05)
Definitely do not feel that doubt. It is . We all feel that way when we're doing something new and that we are not used to. But that, that is, you are right where you need to be. And, and that's my experience with life so far. I'm still fairly young, so I got a lot of experiencing to still do. But I would say if you're uncomfortable doing something and you're putting energy into it, you are supposed to be doing it. It's where you're supposed to be. It's that discomfort. That's how you grow. That's how you teach others. And that's how you become a new version that your wife can see to a new version of yourself
Eric Knox: (17:46)
All day. You know, I thought I was supposed to be like moving toward retirement and have things figured out by now and, and I just feel like God just flipped my whole life upside down. Yeah.
Ari O'Donovan: (17:56)
Yeah. It, it's may not be your time for that yet. It just may not be your time for retirement. You got a lot to still do . I love that. And we will, in fact, you know what? Right now, why don't you tell me a little bit more about Hala School
Eric Knox: (18:16)
In the pandemic. We, you know, like when kids went to distance learning, I mean, first of all, we, we know that these schools, these systems, these structures, these academic and educational models are not built for our babies, period. They're not built to what Christopher Emden said, their brilliance and the pandemic only exacerbated all that. When George Floyd got murdered, I think a lot of nonprofits were, especially Bipo nonprofits were like, we just got this big windfall of money. I mean, you know, like after you watched him get murdered on that street in Minneapolis, there was a lot of white awakening, right? White wokeness. And people were like, how can I give? And so we got a big influx of money and I just told our staff, I just said, we are not going to play it safe. We are not gonna sit on none of this money.
Eric Knox: (19:15)
Uh, you know, I always tell my staff, you don't like, you never change the world playing it safe. And I said, we not going. So we took that money and we said, we gonna start a school, we just gonna make it happen. I said, 'cause these are babies. You know, they need something that's congruent with who they are. You know, we raised, you know, it was a heavy lift financially. We, we got a team together, we built an educational model that we felt was congruent with who they were. And uh, I've got two tremendous coad administrator. One is Juju Jones or Julie Jones, but we call her Juju Ju who wrote the curriculum for the school black sister that is just dope. And she does all the climate, curriculum and culture. And then we got Chris Rise on the other side, African American gentlemen who, who does all the administrative work on the other side.
Eric Knox: (20:11)
So we just got the school off the ground. We, you know, we wanted to change the, the academic narrative for black, brown and Native American kids in the heart of Rockwood and Glen Fair, which to me, you know, those are the numbers. If you've ever heard of the number. We were like, if you can get it done here, you can get it done anywhere. And so we got approved last year just before Thanksgiving break. We opened our doors September 1st of this past year. And we're in year one, we're K two, we're gonna add a grade every year till we get through the eighth grade. And then we'll make decisions on if we're gonna go into the high school. But right now we're K two and we're gonna add a grade every year.
Eric Knox: (20:58)
Yes. You know, our teachers, you know, our teachers are, are, are black or Latino. I mean, like, we have no white folks in working either as educators or administrators. And not because we racist or pre prejudice or any of that stuff. We just know, you know, our mantra is you can't be what you haven't seen. So our kids need to see, uh, black and Latino and Native American folks, adults that embody everything they dream of being in the world. And uh, so we always try and get that in front of 'em. So our administrators, our teachers, our counselors, um, all black, all brown, all native. And, and that's, that's how we do, that's how we doing it. That is
Ari O'Donovan: (21:46)
Phenomenal. And that really, like, that's one of the best things. Can't even say it's one of the best things I've heard. I'm, I'm hearing some of the greatest stuff I've ever heard on my podcast Outta your mouth today, .
Eric Knox: (22:00)
Oh, thank you. We 58% black, we 24% Latino and we 18% Native American. That's our student population.
Ari O'Donovan: (22:09)
Man, that is phenomenal. And I did not see my very first black educator until I was in my junior year of undergraduate school. In college. In college. Wow. To have that younger and younger K through two young, that is when it matters.
Eric Knox: (22:31)
Yes. I mean, I'm like you, I didn't see my first black teacher until I was in high school and I was going to Catholic schools in the hood and I didn't see any black or brown teachers or, so that's, that's it, man. You know, like when these kids, you know, like our mentoring program, same thing, right? Like we, our sweet spot in that space is making sure we have representation. Representation is key to what we do, right? Them kids can get a portrait of what they want to be because an adult that looks like him shares the same community experiences is showing up every day.
Ari O'Donovan: (23:10)
That's so important. You have to see it to, to believe that you can do it, to believe that it's someone you can trust and listen to and learn from. I saw something on IG not too long ago about a black woman doctor who was going to middle schools and high schools and letting people try on her white coat and telling, educating them about what it takes to get into medical school and that you can do it black and brown folks. And it's like, you'd be surprised the power of just putting on a doctor's white coat that belongs to a black woman physician. You'd be surprised.
Eric Knox: (23:48)
The the focuses of our school is literacy, urban farming, steam and entrepreneurialship. Right? And so we bring people that represent those fields, right? Like we bring, you know, we bring in black farmers, right? Like, I don't know if you've ever heard of Mud Bone Grown. They come in, they talk about farming, right? Urban farming at that. And you know, we bring in state of American storytellers and they come in and they do native circles and it's, it's brilliant. We've taken kids on field trips to Mexican restaurants. So family members in our school that own those re I mean we, you know, we're gonna eventually do a, right now we have a community garden, but we're planning over the next couple of years to really blow that out. We're no longer doing handed down food from the district, but we're getting, uh, you know, we're growing our food from the garden. We're doing scratch food, we're doing farm to table. We got a full-time chef. Them kids are getting a scratch meal every day, breakfast and lunch and a little bit on their way out the door when they leave for the day.
Ari O'Donovan: (24:53)
That is so great. Just having a, a homegrown good quality nutritious meal. And then you're learning how to grow those food items yourself that is so necessary. and amazing.
Eric Knox: (25:12)
I mean, in the garden they are, I mean, they're in the garden doing math and science and biology and I mean they're, they're doing work schoolwork and garden, right? They've not just gardening, but part of it is the curriculum that's built out of it right. Around some of their other core stuff that you, you know, you just have to have.
Ari O'Donovan: (25:32)
And I love that you're incorporating that and, and allowing students to do hands-on stuff while also learning concepts. I love that you're incorporating an aspect of entrepreneurship in there because we can't just keep this idea that the only way to success and happiness and financial freedom comes with becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I mean, there are other ways, you know, it's great that if you're doing that, and there's a lot of black women that are, and other people and other bipo community members that are putting themselves in those spaces. First person to graduate from a graduate program black person in 2023. So it's happening. But there are other ways that you can find financial freedom and joy in what you do that you can build on your own as well. If you just have the, just the willingness and a little bit of knowledge and to have seen other people do it that look like you
Eric Knox: (26:32)
Yeah. And that are showing up. You know, like I I always say programs don't, programs may enrich a person's life, but people change people's lives. I am who I am because people put me on, right. I am who I am because of connections. I am because somebody saw something in me that I probably didn't see in myself. You know, that a relationship, a happenstance relationship, right? And I think programs are important and they help with building skill sets, but man, when we talk about as access man, somebody fundamentally stepping into your life and, you know, challenging you, pushing you, that's people work.
Ari O'Donovan: (27:13)
Mm-hmm. , it takes people, it takes consistency. It takes the right type of people really caring about what they do and the outcome of these kids. And that really, really does make the difference. So when someone's trying to join, holla become part of Holla School, what does the matching process look like and what goes into helping to develop the programming?
Eric Knox: (27:40)
You know, if you want to be a mentor, number one, you usually, we, I mean we recruit all year long, but our training happens at the last weekend in August. We match in September and we start end of September. Uh, where you make a one year school year commitment to your kid, that training in August, it's an all day training. We can't, like the schools hit us up. I think the national statistics of kid to mentor is like one for every one kid for, I'm sorry, for every one mentor that's 500 kids that need mentorship. So the need is just, it's outstanding. It's just outstanding. We have more schools reaching out for mentorship than we have mentors because we're so specific about what kind of mentor we're looking for. So if people want to get involved and mentor, usually we stay in touch with 'em, you know, they can do stuff up until the point where they're ready to mentor. So if somebody came to me in December, wanted to start mentoring, we could get 'em involved in different ways, like either doing food boxes or tutoring and stuff like that. But if they want to map be a match, they, they, they gotta go through our training and once they go through our training, then we do our match. And then they've gotta make a a one year school commitment to our program.
Ari O'Donovan: (29:03)
Yeah. That's, that's really impactful. And I know that that one year commitment makes all the difference because you can't just enter a child's life and be there for a couple of weeks and then you know, you on to doing different things. You, you really have to be like a fixture in that kid's life. Yeah,
Eric Knox: (29:23)
No doubt. The ironic thing is, is that most of our mentors have been around 2, 3, 4, 5 years. Yeah. Rarely do we have someone that stops. If we have someone that stops mentoring after years because they were relocated outta the city somewhere else. But most people that jump in keep
Ari O'Donovan: (29:40)
Going. Yep. And I think that has a lot to do with how you select people and what you have them doing before they can ever start mentoring a child. You really have to have your heart and soul in it.
Eric Knox: (29:51)
We spend an inordinate amount of time working with mentors. So we have, uh, mentor Mondays that we expect people to go to in the evening. Um, we have Holla Scholars, which is a lot of our college-age students that want to go deeper into mentoring and community. Our C B O community base learn how A C B O works. And so we pour as much into our mentors as we do our mentees and our Holla scholars, which is our college age students. We take them on trips every spring, right? Like we take them, we've taken 'em to Philly, we've taken 'em to la, we've taken 'em to Chicago, and we connect with other black brown executive directors or CEOs or presence of nonprofits in those communities so that they get an exposure of what it looks like in other cities.
Ari O'Donovan: (30:43)
That is fabulous. Oh, I just love that. I just love all that y'all do. And I know that a major theme for Hollis works seems to be, from what I've gathered, healing and being healed. What have you seen as an impact of this healing? And how can others who wanna support or start their own healing journey begin?
Eric Knox: (31:08)
You know, healing doesn't happen in a vacuum. People pushing against people. And you know, when I, I'll give you an example, man. Like, I'm in this work because, to to to some degree because the healing that's happened, that's happened and it's happening in my life, I've been in therapy like three, four years now and I had extremely traumatic childhood, a lot of abuse. And, uh, when I graduated from college, I didn't know why, you know, I thought I was gonna go to the M B A and I didn't, that didn't happen. I was like, what am I gonna do with my life? And I ended up working at a health club just beeping members in right after college, bored to death. And then the club manager said, Hey, we're doing a kids camp this summer. First time ever, would you be interested in leading it?
Eric Knox: (31:59)
I was like, man, I don't wait, why would you pick me? And he goes, well, all these kids of these families that come in here as members, these kid's always hanging out to this talking to you and you, you have a way with these kids, right? So we think you'd be great at running this. And so I ended up doing it and it was a very affluent white club here in Portland. And then I was like, but I wanna do this for black kids, . So after one summer, that thing was a hit. After one summer I ended up moving into inter northeast Portland. And you know, in the early nineties, inter northeast Portland, I was on sixth Shaver, a kid who got his brains blown out right there on 16 shaver. I had read about it in Oregonian and like days later I drove down there just to see where it happened.
Eric Knox: (32:45)
And across the street was a house that was for rent. And I ended up renting it and moving into that house, left my job and said, this is where I want to be. And I didn't know where the money was gonna come from, but there was so many black boys on that block, 30 something years. This is what I've been doing. And then I went to, you know, like, this work is, it's, it's a heavy work and compassion fatigue is real and you learn a lot about yourself doing this kind of work. And I was, I remember in talking about therapists in tears, you know, overwhelmed by it. And I just said, I don't know why I'm so drawn to this stuff. I think about this stuff all the time. And he goes, well, your childhood. And I go, what do you mean? He goes, you grew up as an orphan.
Eric Knox: (33:29)
And I was like, yeah. He goes, well, the kids that you work with have been orphaned. And they said orphans, no orphans. And uh, man, something just broke in me. And I was like, that work, that healing that, you know, it'd been going for a long time, but it just now I was able to connect the dots. Um, and so when we talk about this healing journey in our work, man, we talk about, we've all been impacted by systems of oppression. We've all been traumatized to some degree, and mentor mentee relationships are done, right? Both are transformed in a profound way through their relationship with one another. And that's why I always say, you know, you gotta get away from this like teacher student thing because those roles can oscillate. The teacher sometimes becomes the student and the student becomes the teacher. So like these kids, um, I remember I was, um, talking to one of the parents at, for the Benson girls basketball team and I was like, you know, I was like, you know, I, I really care about these girls and I really want them to make, you know, solid decisions.
Eric Knox: (34:46)
We were going through a real rough patch during the season and the parents said, well, I don't know if you, I dunno if you know this, but they care about you too, . And they said it like, like they care about your soul too. Like they see your flaws and they love and they care for you too. So don't think you just love and care and are supporting them. They, they love care and they support you too. And I have was like, oh, that you're right. You're absolutely right. That's kind of how we see it.
Ari O'Donovan: (35:17)
First of all, I'm so glad to hear that you are and have been in therapy because it's really important to do that. We all as black people need, there are times in your life where you just need to talk to somebody where you need to have somebody listen and give you guidance and just be there specifically for you. That is so critical,
Eric Knox: (35:40)
Man. I tell you man, I grew up in a neighborhood that, you know, like you would look that crazy if you said you were seeing a therapist, like you were seen as weak. And it has done miracles in my life over the last three and a half, four years for sure.
Ari O'Donovan: (35:55)
Yep. It really will do so much great, great stuff in your life and, and these girls that touched my whole heart right there, they care for you and you care for them. That is a, they are supporting you and you're supporting them. It's a mutual thing. You're both getting something great from each other.
Eric Knox: (36:16)
Yeah, for sure. I I, you know, I love them man. Those, those are my, that's my heart. Yeah, they my heart. Yeah.
Ari O'Donovan: (36:27)
And you, you've had quite the remarkable journey and it, it gives me a lot of insight and listeners insight into why you started your nonprofit and all that you've been doing and why it's so important to you.
Eric Knox: (36:42)
Yeah, I think we are always gonna have to come back to that. Why, why am I doing it and how am I doing it right? There's a story I tell every so often. So my grandmother was this Jewish woman from San Francisco. My grandfather was this black man from Harlem who grew up in the housing projects in Harlem, but he had a skill, a writing skill, and I, I guess, I don't know who in the city took notice of his writing skill, but, but he was so brilliant at it that he got a journalism scholarship to N Y U first in his family. And my grandmother, the Jewish grandmother who was already a fluent, went to N Y U the same year he went to N Y U and she was an artist, a brilliant artist. And they met there and they fell in love.
Eric Knox: (37:36)
This was in the thirties, they couldn't get married, but in three different states. So they decided that they was gonna move to Mexico City, have kids and, and start their life there. And they went there, he went there and he started working in the Mexico City school system. And she, she got heavy into this communist socialist art movement in Mexico City. My mother was the oldest and then my mother, and they had two more kids. And my mother was having a play date with, she was 10 years old, she was having a play date with one of her classmates and classmate that she was having a play date. Dad came over to pick up his daughter and he was a doctor. And my grandma came who I never met, but my grandma opened the door and he noticed that there was a lump on her breast and said, had she ever considered getting it checked out?
Eric Knox: (38:32)
And she hadn't even, it didn't dawn on her. So she went, went, ended up gonna the hospital getting it checked out. They gave her, she had breast cancer and they gave her like 90 days to live. She ended up dying a month later. This man at the funeral in Mexico City gave my mother these two paintings and said that her mom, my grandmother was a prolific artist and those paintings reminded him of her. So my grandma, so my mother kept those paintings and, and my grandfather, his her dad, they all moved to, to Los Angeles to start their life over without their mom. Interesting enough, when I grew up, my mom kept those paintings on the wall. She never, I mean, she held onto them things and to me they were just really ugly paintings. But to make a long story short, when I ended up going to Oregon State, my mom lost her job and she was, uh, getting ready to lose her home.
Eric Knox: (39:26)
And she was a community, you know, she did all the community events in Inglewood. And so she would always do these like leadership things and bring people in the neighborhood so that they could talk about these like community block parties that she would host and who would get the permits and who would do the jumper and the games and all that stuff. But she didn't really have the money to do it. But she said, you know, we gotta have this block party and it's gotta go on. And she was losing her house and she had lost her job, so she decided I'm gonna do this. Anyway, so she invited all the neighborhood leaders and it was a person at the end of the block who had just moved in a new family. So she said, well, let me go make them feel welcome. So she went down there, invited them to come to the house.
Eric Knox: (40:07)
And if you ever go to my mom's house, she, she does all little craft stuff and she loves to show you her crafts . So this is a new family, she's bringing them in, she's showing them her crafts. And then she comes up on these two paintings and she goes, yeah, these were given to me by a man when my mother died in Mexico City. And the guy looked at the scene how like when you do a painting, there's a signature of the artist who did the rendering. So he looked at the signature and the signature said Diego Rivera. And I don't know if you know who Diego Rivera is, okay, yeah. Diego was Diego Rivera that gave my mom these paintings that he painted. And mind you, when my mom lost her mom, she spiraled and she didn't know Diego Rivera from Adam and Eve, the man happened to be an art appraiser.
Eric Knox: (41:04)
And the man like doubled back like, oh, you gotta be kidding me. Are these authentic Diego Rivera paintings? And she said, yes, I guess he's the one who gave them to me. So my mother ended up selling the paintings and it changed her financial world. And the funny thing is, she got the news on a Friday, but she had to wait till Tuesday because that's when the art auction at this place on Sunset was in la. So she had to guard those paintings with her life. And um, and I always say that that's the why and how what we do at Holly in terms of mentorship, because once I always say once my mother understood, like once an appraiser came and showed my mom the true value of those paintings, my mom's interaction with those paintings changed. I mean, she saw those paintings differently. And I say, you know, like when we mentor, that's exactly what we do.
Eric Knox: (42:00)
Like we come, we are like appraisers, man. We come alongside these kids and remind them of their rich history, of their beauty of, you know, like things that are lost and not prominent in their education that they wouldn't get otherwise. And we show them, right, not only the beauty of their culture, but the beauty of themselves and we give them the right appraisal of who they are as black kids, as native kids, as Latino kids. And once they understand the real value of who they are and the history of their community, how they interact with it changes, right? They change, they fundamentally change. And so we do all that social emotional identity development as well as academic stuff and the access and opportunities and that stuff. That's what we do as mentors, right? And uh, we are nothing more than appraisers that come alongside our kids and show them the true value of who they're and who they folks are.
Ari O'Donovan: (43:00)
That is so phenomenal. Your mother's story, your grandparents' story, how that led to how you interact with these kids and show them their greatness. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And I bet that really did change her life when she became aware, oh my of those paintings
Eric Knox: (43:19)
, she's still chilling. Jacuzzi
Ari O'Donovan: (43:22)
Man,
Eric Knox: (43:23)
Having her graces watching her videos and living her best life. I love that. And that's when I was in college.
Ari O'Donovan: (43:28)
I love that. And I love to hear, I love to hear somebody have something nice who deserves it and who is nice. Yeah. And does good. Thank you. That's, that's remarkable. And, and I love that. I love the appraisal of the kids. Whenever I put these episodes out, I always find little snippets to create stuff for social media, advertising, everything. I'm not even gonna have a hard time finding anything from this episode. It's gonna be, I got too many, I'm gonna have to create more than one .
Eric Knox: (44:03)
Oh man. I, but you know, it's true man. Think about like when somebody says, man, you would be great at, I see you. You know, when somebody sees something in you that you don't see in yourself, that's, it's a powerful thing, man.
Ari O'Donovan: (44:17)
It really is. Right? It really is. And it just takes one person. It just takes one person to see something good in you and remind you of it and fight to get you to see it. That's all it takes.
Eric Knox: (44:29)
Yes, absolutely.
Ari O'Donovan: (44:31)
That really is. And I know that you've got Holla, you've got Holla School. We haven't talked a whole lot about Fubu Newburgh. And it goes also by, for us, by us Newburgh. And it's all about centering black youth in Newburgh, Oregon through a number of values like connecting joy and liberation. But there's some terms that people may not be familiar with. I know I had to look at least one of these terms up and they are Ubuntu and Sankofa. Can you tell us what these values are and how they impact?
Eric Knox: (45:11)
So Bryce Cofield and Amber Nelson, they, they le lead this initiative. I don't know if you heard, you know, like it was a year, year and a half ago. The, the superintendent was like pushing back on no b l M stuff in the schools, no, l g none of that. Like they was pushing hard against all of that. And one, and so some community folks was like, could we get hollow out here to do this work? You know, like to really support our black kids. And for me, you know, I, my work is East Portland mostly. And so I always believe you do, if whatever work you do, it needs to be organic, right? Like I didn't want to come into that community and pretend that I knew the needs of that community. I wanted to find leaders inside that community that represent that community like that can continue that work.
Eric Knox: (46:02)
Because it started from Newburgh. So Holly came, I just went in there and identified leaders, spent some time with 'em and helped them get FUBU holla off the ground. And it's a two year initiative where year in and will be done in a year. The goal is that they'll have their own separate 5 0 1 C three. So they shape sort of the mission, the philosophy, all that. So I can tell you what Sankofa, Sankofa is the Sankofa bird, right? Like the bird flies a specific direction, but it's head points backwards. And the whole point is, is like when you have a Sankofa experience, like, like, like if I was taking a cadre of black young leaders through a Sankofa project, basically what I'm doing is, is that they won't understand their future until they understand their past. You know? And so Sankofa bird represents that, that we are doing work to remind them of the rich heritage of their history, their past, while propelling their life forward. That's the Sankofa ideal. The Umuntu. If you could wait a minute, I can now I'm just ,
Ari O'Donovan: (47:10)
You know, don't even worry about it. Me and my producer, we do a lot of research in advance because I really, I like to make these episodes very focused on whoever the guest is and I really wanna do justice by them and what they're doing and make sure I portray them the absolute best I can. And from what I know, and I don't know a whole lot , I had to look it up myself. But I know that it has to do with essential human virtues, compassion and humanity. It comes from the Zulu to very specific African word that really does from the little bit that I know about. I'm no expert. I'm gonna tell anybody that right away , because I'm learning every day . It seems to really function well with what you do with Fubu Newberg and hol mentors and Hall School. I can tell that both of those things, both of those words and the virtues that they carry and the story that you've told me, they all really work well with what you're doing. It's just another way to describe and manifest that with African language.
Eric Knox: (48:23)
No doubt. I mean, if you're in a black kid space, then you know, I I'm connecting with you at some point, you know what I'm saying? Because like I said, the riches are in the niches and we name that so that people understand this is what we about and we, there's no apologies for it. So when Fubu wanted to get off the ground, the most important thing for me is I wanted it to be organic and it it come out of the soil of Newburgh, not out of the soil of Portland, right? Portland could support Newburgh, but I didn't want to go in there like, yeah, we got this. Uh, 'cause I, because I think that's sort of a white supremacist way of, you know, get an organization off the ground, right? And we're not trying to franchise who we are, right? We want that growth to happen naturally.
Ari O'Donovan: (49:16)
And I appreciate that you, you and your team went all the way back into finding African ways to describe things and go about creating a foundation for things. Because the western way of doing things is not always gonna be the answer. And it's definitely not always gonna be the answer for black and brown kids. Yeah.
Eric Knox: (49:39)
I mean, Adrian Marie Brown get the name of her book, but she's brilliant. You need to look her up. But she talks about critical connections over critical mass. And that's a, that's an example of what we did with Newburgh. For us it was not about critical mass. Like we gotta get, we got a franchise holler everywhere, right? About critical connections. Oh, you and Newburgh, oh you dealing with these issues. Oh, you're trying to work with black and brown kids. Oh, how do we support you without controlling you? You know what I'm saying? And, and so their mission, their values came out of it. Their abuntu and Sankofa that came out of their value and vision, which is in so many ways like ours.
Ari O'Donovan: (50:19)
Exactly. And, and I know exactly what you were talking about earlier. You mentioned how they were really doing a lot of pushback, the Newburgh school district with not allowing any kind of b l m anything in the schools. And I have a friend and she's white and she's a teacher in a Newburgh school and she was so disgusted by that even, you know, she was disgusted. I was disgusted by that. And she was disgusted by that too. And and like you said, they sure did succeed with that, but people can come in with a blue stripe, you know, that's crazy to me. , what y'all doing in, in Newburgh was needed and and you made it specific to the problems in that area and to what Newburgh needed, what Newburgh black and Brown and indigenous kids needed.
Eric Knox: (51:14)
Yeah, we raised the money, we came to Newburgh and we said, this ain't getting off the ground. It's the leader steps up. We got the money for you to get going. And so we gave 'em the money and we let them govern the money. I said they were like any strings, I said, there's no strings here. Like hopefully in the next couple of years you guys will be, be able to spin off of our organization and be self-sustaining. Right. And we've been true to that, right? We've let them create the mission division, the values, the core ethos of the organization and uh, we've been there as support and you know, being willing to be a consultant and voice whenever they need that to
Ari O'Donovan: (51:54)
Happen. That's important to be the voice and, and the consultant, but to let them guide their own trajectory.
Eric Knox: (52:00)
Yeah.
Ari O'Donovan: (52:00)
That's important. That's really, really important. Yes. A lot of people, like you said, they try to come in and they make it all about them. And let's just take whatever we have going on and just spread it everywhere in the exact same way that we're doing it here. One size fits all. That's all we're gonna do. That's just not the right way with Bipo kids. .
Eric Knox: (52:19)
Yes. And you gotta move at the speed of trust. Yep. That's our whole thing, right? They're
Ari O'Donovan: (52:25)
Going another one move at the speed of trust. I have so many things I'm gonna put on 30 minute, 30 seconds snip, Hey,
Eric Knox: (52:31)
That's Adrian Marie, that's, that's Adrian Marie Brown Black Space Manifesto. You move at the speed of trust, it's about critical connection, not critical mass. We subscribe to all that stuff. Right? Love it. I'm
Ari O'Donovan: (52:42)
Gonna look
Eric Knox: (52:43)
That up. Us, us trusting them, them trusting us. That's part of Black Man. Black Space Manifesto is just about doing our organization in ways that critique white supremacy in our systems and then our ways of being as folks of color that inhaled all that growing up in this Western context.
Ari O'Donovan: (53:04)
Right, right. I gotta find that book now, . That is remarkable. I gotta find that.
Eric Knox: (53:10)
I can't, I I, you know, it's messing me up. I
Ari O'Donovan: (53:14)
Got some facts for you and don't worry, I looked them up and and they're correct . But I got some, some data for you and I want you to, to discuss it with me right now. I wanna talk a little bit about the numbers. Your 2022 annual report notes that 90 plus percent of students have a strong relationship with their mentors and 100% said their mentors made them feel proud of their identity and hopeful for the future future. If this isn't definitive success, I really don't know what is. Could you share a story from this year that you think really represents the success of Holla, holla School, all of it, any story you want that represents what you do and your nonprofit? Well
Eric Knox: (54:05)
I took 17 black girls to the National African-American Museum of History and Culture last summer. And we went from the there, which is in Washington dc We went from there to do a full on Howard University tour, right. The Mecca of HBCUs. And after we finished that tour, they took us to the library at the Howard University Library and we went in there. All 'em kids was like wanting to buy bomber jackets or sweaters or baseball caps or any kind of memorabilia. But there was one kid who as kids were buying their stuff at the cashier. I noticed she had like six books, six black history books. And I went up and I was like, wait what? She goes, yeah, I'll paraphrase it. But it was just sort of this concept of like, you know, the impact Holla had had on her life about being black.
Eric Knox: (55:03)
You know, she had grew up as an Oregonian and that's a different experience in and of itself. And she goes be going to this national African American Museum of history and culture and then going to Howard those and then being a part of Holland makes me want to explore who I'm and my history. And I was like, girl, say less. I bought all her books, all the rest of them. Y'all can have y'all gloves and beanies and all that. I said, I'm buying all six of your books. And that's because of those statistics you read, right? Like that saying like, we're not focused on, people are gonna remember how you made 'em feel more than anything. At the end of the day, like people are gonna remember how you made 'em feel. And our work at Hol, I feel like, you know, those kids walk away with that sense of belonging and feeling amazing about who they are as a black person and they get permission to be themselves in predominantly white spaces. So it was refreshing for me to be on this tour last summer and just the intuition, I would say to do that critical thinking and say, man, what's gonna last a lot longer? These books that are gonna shape who I am, this is gonna propel me to walk in the fullness of my identity. That just helped me know that our mentorship is working.
Ari O'Donovan: (56:39)
Man, I love that. And I love that you bought all six of them books. I love it. 'cause she really thought about that based on the story. I can tell she really thought about that. And to find that knowledge, to be ready to start that journey is important.
Eric Knox: (56:56)
And now guess what, I'm going to graduation after this interview and she's the first in her family to go on a full rice basketball scholarship. Hofstra University in New York
Ari O'Donovan: (57:07)
City. Oh my God. Go ahead on girl. She's on
Eric Knox: (57:10)
A, she on a plane tomorrow at one o'clock.
Ari O'Donovan: (57:13)
Oh my congratulations to her. Wow. That is Noal. That is so dope. Congrats. Ah, I, there's so much good stuff that you're telling me and it makes me happy. It makes me again like feel proud to be a black woman yet again, I find ways to do that. That's awesome. Can you take a moment to speak directly to the people listening? What does Oregon need to hear?
Eric Knox: (57:49)
I did a campaign in the Pandemic called Black Lives, and it was billboards all over the city. It was a big campaign and I did it to answer that question, right. Um, what Portland needs to hear is that we're here, we've been here, and our communities are vibrant and beautiful and brilliant and abundant. And um, one of the things that people don't tell you is, is that even though Portland is predominantly white, when you go 18 and under and newborns in the city of Portland, that they are now starting to be disproportionately black and brown babies than anything. And so that means that this city is growing more and more diverse, particularly in the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. This city's gonna be browner and Portland needs to hear that. And what does that mean? Well, that means a question goes out to our city and the question is, what kind of city do we want to be?
Eric Knox: (58:58)
How hospitable do we wanna be? What kind of access and opportunities do we really believe in progressive ideals? And are we gonna practice 'em here in the city? You know what I'm saying? Portland always posits itself as being this very liberal, progressive space, but they gentrified Black Portland while putting Black Lives Matter signs on their front lines. You know what I'm saying? And so I don't want us to talk about it. I want us to be about it, you know what I'm saying? And so as the city grows more brown and uh, more black and brown, the question I have for our city is what do we want to be? How hospitable do we want to be? What kind of access do we wanna create? And that's what I wanna ask because our black and brown babies are on their way. This city is shifting and how are we preparing ourselves for it?
Ari O'Donovan: (59:55)
Absolutely. I cannot think of a better way to conclude this episode and have people critical critically thinking about a really, really important question. For some people it might be a little bit of a heavy lift depending on who you are and how you're gonna think about it and what your background is. But that is really important as the years come by and 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. Yeah,
Eric Knox: (01:00:27)
That's right. Black lives, it lives in Portland and ain't going away. Yep.
Ari O'Donovan: (01:00:33)
Absolutely. Never. Where could people learn more about y'all online?
Eric Knox: (01:00:42)
Two places. You can either go on holla mentors.org or holla school.org. And if you are heavy into mentorship, go to holla mentors.org and there's an information link and you know, all you have to do is email that you're looking to get involved on some level, and I will have our community engagement person connect with you. And same goes for hollow school, right? There's a link to get involved, whether you want to show up and, you know, volunteer or you want to be a community partner, you just go on that and somebody will respond to you and help you, give you the correct pathways in, in terms of how you get involved in our organization.
Ari O'Donovan: (01:01:20)
Perfect. Perfect. And, and y'all are on IG as well. Instagram.
Eric Knox: (01:01:26)
We're on Instagram. How school and how Mentors can follow us there, find us there. And we're on Facebook.
Ari O'Donovan: (01:01:35)
It's readily available. Y'all You'all can learn all kinds of stuff. Yes. Take the time. Yes, learn, do research about Hala ha school, Hala mentors, all of it. Learn more, follow them on social media. It's a really remarkable nonprofit. And Eric, you're a remarkable person. Thanks y'all. Don't forget to check out the latest episode of Neighborhood Doctor with my friend Dr. Ryan Hassan premiering next week. Until next time, thanks for listening to this episode. Came bring the community info without the community. Appreciate you showing up. If you wanna reach out, hit us up on IG at boosting our voices, or at our website, boost oregon.org. Keep doing great things, keep uplifting one another and we'll do the same. See you next time.